Rep. Tony Gonzales drops reelection bid under GOP leadership pressure after confessing to affair

Embattled Texas GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales relented to pressure from House Republican leaders and dropped his reelection bid after confessing to having an affair with a subordinate. 

Mr. Gonzales skipped votes on Thursday after Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana and the House GOP leadership team issued a joint statement saying they asked him to end his campaign. Later that night, Mr. Gonzales announced he would do so. 

“After deep reflection and with the support of my loving family, I have decided not to seek reelection while serving out the rest of this Congress with the same commitment I’ve always had to my district,” the fourth-term congressman said in a statement. 

Only 24 hours earlier, he had declared he was the only candidate who could keep the seat in GOP hands, despite his confession to the affair. 

Mr. Gonzales, a married father of six, said his 2024 affair with Regina Santos-Aviles, who worked in his congressional office and was also married, was a “mistake,” and he has reconciled with his wife and asked God to forgive him.

Those comments came in an interview with talk show host Joe Pags, after previously denying an intimate relationship with Santos-Aviles, who died by self-immolation the year after the affair.

The congressman used the interview to push back on some of the accusations against him, saying he had nothing to do with Santos-Aviles’ suicide and that a pay boost he gave her in 2024 was part of a staff-wide, performance-based raise cycle and preceded the start of the affair.

The House Ethics Committee had launched an investigation into the affair, a violation of the chamber’s code of conduct, before Mr. Gonzales confessed. The investigation, which was also set to look into the allegations that the pay raise was a special favor, is expected to continue.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Majority Whip Tom Emmer and Republican Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain urged the Ethics Committee to act “expeditiously” in their joint statement suggesting Mr. Gonzales exit his reelection race.

Mr. Gonzales’s move leaves Brandon Herrera, a pro-gun YouTube influencer whom he narrowly beat last cycle, as the Republican nominee for the seat. The two were set to face off in a May runoff after neither secured an outright majority of votes cast in Texas’ primary election on Tuesday.

“I appreciate Tony Gonzales for making the appropriate decision,” Mr. Herrera posted on social media, saying he looks forward to being the voice that constituents of Texas’ 23rd District deserve “from the border, to oil theft, water rights, data centers, and many other issues.”

The allegations of Mr. Gonzales’ affair had been quietly circulating since Santos-Aviles died last September, but blew up recently after sexually explicit text messages he sent her were publicly released.

The aide’s widower, Adrian Aviles, and his lawyer helped drum up the publicity in what Mr. Gonzales described as a coordinated political attack against him after a failed attempt to shake him down for $300,000.

Mr. Herrera launched a GoFundMe campaign to help Mr. Aviles and his 8-year-old son that has raised more than $60,000.

Katarina Flicker, spokesperson for the House Majority PAC, the Democratic leadership-aligned outside funding operation, said Mr. Herrera’s nomination to replace Mr. Gonzales “is a gift to Democrats and a full-blown crisis for Republican leadership” and its campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee.

“Herrera is an antisemitic YouTuber with a record that’s far outside the mainstream, and voters will see that clearly,” she said. “Now the NRCC and Speaker Mike Johnson are aligning themselves with his extremism, and it could cost them TX-23 in November.”